Part Seventeen
Dev, 1922
Chapter 43

I’d just finished my homework on the Islets of Langerhans, the pancreatic cells that sounded to me like an exotic Scandinavian retreat, when Bernie let himself into our apartment. He called to the kitchen to thank my mother for the tea and cookies she’d left him as a snack, and sat on the couch beside the steamer trunk I used as a desk. He’d be staying for dinner too, after which he and my father would study Talmud together.

Following Shmuel’s funeral two years ago, Bernie had continued to visit my parents. For the first month after our trip to the museum, things between us were strained, but since we were never alone after that, it was soon copacetic for us to be around each other. Yaakov dusted out, which was jake with me. His ogling gave me the heebie-jeebies, and I’d heard he was hanging out with Meyer Lansky and Benny Siegel, who were bound for trouble. My mother was grateful to Bernie for staying in touch, but my father ignored him until last year when he began rabbinical studies. Overnight, Bernie was transformed from a shmendrick into a Solomon in his eyes. Once Papa invited Bernie to study with him, it was like the old days when he and Shmuel sat, heads bent over the text, dissecting ancient miracles. What I did in biology lab, they did at the kitchen table. Only now they did it under the electric lights that had finally been installed in our building.

Not long after their nightly study sessions began, my mother suggested Bernie come early and eat dinner with us. He quickly became a regular, more family member than guest, and having a young man with a hearty appetite at our table again was like medicine to her. I was glad there was no longer an empty chair staring back at me across the table. Soon Bernie was even attending Shabbas services with Papa. I was surprised he didn’t spend Friday night with his own family, but his father snapped a cap when Bernie announced he wanted be a rabbi instead of working in the appliance store. Woman’s intuition told me that Bernie was hurt when his father practically disowned him, but he was clearly thrilled that my father had as good as adopted him.

“So, what did you learn in school today?” Bernie asked me now, careful to eat over his plate. My mother trusted him alone to eat food outside the kitchen and not leave crumbs.

I handed him my biology book, open to the page I’d been reading. “Dr. Frederick Banting of the University of Toronto recently discovered that insulin, extracted from the pancreas, can treat diabetes.” I loved learning about the body’s intricate and interconnected parts. It was like watching a play in which each scene was more dramatic than the one before.

Bernie leaned forward to study the illustrations and marvel at God’s creation too. Almost as much as my brother had, he enjoyed seeing me excited about my classes.

“Do you think I’ll make a life-saving discovery some day?” I asked. With Shmuel gone, Mama too ready to praise, and Papa indifferent, Bernie’s encouragement mattered.

He spread out his arms. “I can see the headline in the Jewish Daily Forward. Doc Dev Lev Discovers Cure for Gout! Jews Urged to Renounce Schmaltz!”

“I’m serious.”

Bernie lowered his arms. “I didn’t mean to make fun. Seeing you inspired is contagious.” I smiled to show things between us were ducky again and asked what inspired him. He told me about Rabbi Bernard Revel, still in his thirties, who’d radicalized the curriculum when he became president of Yeshiva University. Now, in addition to studying Torah and Jewish laws, Bernie and his classmates took practical subjects too, like how to write sermons and do pastoral counselling. “We’re even learning the business of running a synagogue,” Bernie said. “Rabbi Revel used to manage his wife’s family oil business in Oklahoma.”

“There are Jews in Oklahoma?” I clapped my hands to my cheeks.

Bernie playfully slapped my hands down. “I’m serious too. I want to be a modern rabbi, not stuck in the old-country ways.” I nodded, ready to hear more. If being modern meant having enlightened ideas about women, then my father, who seemed to respect Bernie, might begin to think that way too. Bernie inhaled the aroma of Mama’s brisket wafting from the kitchen before continuing. “I don’t think rabbis should hold themselves above others even though the Mishnah says that those who teach another even a single letter of Torah must be treated with honour.”

“What does it mean to treat a rabbi with honour?” I wondered if my relationship with him would have to become more formal after Bernie’s semicha in a few weeks. The ordination would mark a turning point in his life, and perhaps in mine.

“For one thing, you’re supposed to stand in his presence.”

I stood. Bernie rose and gently pushed me back down, letting his hands rest on my shoulders. “I’m not interested in that kind of honour. Besides, a rabbi’s wife is considered his extension. She doesn’t have to stand. In fact, people are supposed to get up in her presence too.”

I stood again, making a game of it, but having said, “wife,” Bernie pulled his hands away from my shoulders, as if they’d caught fire. It was discombobulating. I had long since stopped being stuck on him. Not that I’d lost interest in nookie. I liked to neck under the gym risers. But I refused to go goofy over boys. I planned to wear a white lab coat some day, not an apron.

“Are you modern enough to approve of the bat mitzvah of Rabbi Mordecai’s daughter?” I asked, to change the subject. Rabbi Mordecai was the leader of the Reform movement, which was so liberal that people like my father didn’t even think of them as Jews. Our shul considered his daughter’s coming-of-age ceremony nearly as scandalous as marrying outside the religion.

Bernie pursed his lips. “It’s one thing for girls to read biology texts, quite another for them to be called up to the bima to read Torah. Some learning is best left to boys and men.”

Says you, I almost blurted out, but for once I kept my big yap shut. An argument might only harden Bernie’s position about women, and I still hoped to persuade him to influence Papa in my favour. Instead, I asked him brightly, “So what did you learn in school today?”

“I learned that Babe Ruth signed a three-year, $52,000 per year contract with the Yankees.”

“Are rabbis, even modern ones, allowed to be interested in baseball?”

“If we want to reach our congregants. Baseball is the universal religion of America.”

“I heard it was being challenged by a new sport called water skiing.”

“Are you pulling my leg?” Bernie frowned. I think he regretted his choice of expression.

“I heard it on the radio at my cousin’s. My uncle bought three sets ... from your dad.” Bernie laughed. “A man named Ralph Samuelson was the first to ski on a lake in Minnesota.”

“It’ll never catch on among our people,” Bernie said. “Jews aren’t good in the water.” We grew silent, thinking of Shmuel. Then he asked how water skiing was different from snow skiing.

I was glad to get back to sports. “The way the announcer described it, you keep your body stiffer and lean back. If you bend at the knees and lean forward, like snow skiing, you end up face down in the water.” I stood in front of the window holding a pencil between both hands like a tow bar. Seeing a horse-drawn pushcart down on the street, I imagined a boat pulling me across the waves. With knees locked, I rotated my upper body back and forth and skimmed toward the horizon. Bernie came up behind me and held the ends of my makeshift tow bar too. His chest pressed against my back and he exhaled into my hair. I let go and turned around so that his arms encircled me. This time, there was no mistaking his thoughts and feelings. Or mine.

“I’m sorry Bernie,” I stammered. “I don’t ... I mean,” I took a deep breath. “You’re like a brother to me now.” His face fell along with his arms. Half a minute later, when my father came home, we were still facing each other, wordless.

“Dinner’s ready,” my mother called from the kitchen. Bernie went with Papa to perform the ritual washing up before the meal. I helped Mama carry the food to the table.

***

After we ate, the kitchen became Papa and Bernie’s private yeshiva. My mother sat on the couch mending my father’s collars. I perched at the steamer-trunk to finish my homework. Tonight’s English assignment was using prefixes to turn a word into its opposite. Regard and disregard, sense and nonsense. It didn’t always work the other way; you couldn’t be combobulated or descript. To immigrants like Tante Yetta, the language was a minefield, but I continued to love its complexity, second only to my obsession with science. Mathematics, alas, held no such fascination. Faced with a geometry proof, I eavesdropped on the conversation in the kitchen.

The reading was Deuteronomy, Chapter 12. After wandering in the desert forty years, the Jews are finally about to enter the Promised Land. Moses tells the people that God wants them to “smash the idols and obliterate the name” of the nations they are about to kick out. Tonight was Bernie’s turn to open the debate. In an earnest voice, he asked what God meant. My father quoted the medieval commentator Rashi, who said Jews must destroy all the places where other peoples worshiped their gods, even “upon the lofty mountains and hills, and under every lush tree.” He cited another verse that said Jews could only worship in the sacred places the Lord designated.

Papa’s sure voice implied there was little room for interpretation, but Bernie said, “That works in an ancient agricultural society, but here in America, Jews often take over old buildings, even churches, and convert them into synagogues. We can’t afford to destroy those structures.”

Now papa sounded aggrieved. “God forbid we should make a shul from a storefront or church. Or that you end up serving in one as a rabbi. Scripture is clear on this.” He again recited Rashi. “Only to the place which your Lord God shall choose to set his Name shall you bring burnt offerings.”

“We no longer bring burnt offerings. We give money,” Bernie said.

“Exactly the kind of worship God warns us against.” I heard my father pound the table. “Jews today lust after Mammon. In the shtetl, we were poor, but we adhered strictly to Torah. In America, we’ve turned away from the most basic commandments. It will be our downfall.”

“At least we’re not following Moloch and sacrificing our children.” I think Bernie meant the remark as a joke, to lighten the conversation, but it was followed by a heavy silence.

“We are sacrificing our children.” Papa’s voice rose. “They go to school with Gentiles, they want to eat the same trayf as them. Boys come home with ideas for going off to war.”

“I don’t see what Shmuel ...”

“Girls announce they want to go off to college.” My father’s voice got more exasperated. Bernie tried to intercede again, but Papa, reading aloud the rest of the chapter, overpowered him. “Beware of being lured into their ways after they have been wiped out before you! ... You shall not act thus ... for they perform for their gods every abhorrent act that the Lord detests.”

“Surely you don’t claim all Americans are idolatrous?” Bernie’s question hung in the air. With my father now silent, Bernie continued. “Some American practices must be allowed under Jewish law. A leader’s job is to figure out which ones, otherwise we’ll never be accepted here.”

“Show me the Talmudic passage where it says that.”

“There is no commentary. That text was written two thousand years ago. Today is today.”

“The ancient words served our forefathers for five millennia, through more change than you or I will see in our lifetimes.” Pages rustled. My father trusted the text. He had no patience for speculation. Although, when he and Shmuel had similar arguments, my brother had a knack for quoting passages that made ancient writings sound as if they’d been written for Jews today.

The one I remember best was in Numbers, when the five daughters of Zelophehad protest that because their father has not left behind a son, they should be allowed to inherit the family’s share of land. Moses agrees, provided they marry within their own tribe and turn the property over to their husbands. Shmuel argued further, citing oral law from the Zohar and Baraita, that the daughters were God-fearing women who could themselves be trusted as stewards of the land.

“Only until they married their cousins,” my father repeated, his finger still on the Torah.“Even if they never married,” Shmuel said, holding forth his sources. “Their right derived from their righteousness, not from their family lineage.” Papa still didn’t buy his argument, but because my brother had quoted the ancient sages, he was at least willing to consider the idea.

Bernie’s scholarship couldn’t hold a candle to my brother’s. He’d admitted to me that he grew bored with nitpicking arguments. A rabbi today had to help his congregants retain their faith while adjusting to the new world, not harking back to the old one. I approved of his intentions, but couldn’t help seeing my brother as superior to Bernie. Shmuel could nitpick and make a case for modernism. I took my father’s impatience as a sign that he saw the difference between them too.

I waited for Papa to quote more Talmud, but a series of thuds signalled that he’d closed the books. “Interesting questions, but enough studying for tonight.” He called to my mother for tea and cake. She bit off the last piece of thread and hurried into the kitchen. I was angry at her for accepting my father’s right to treat her like a slave, and angry at my father for not holding Bernie to the same high standards he demanded from Shmuel. But in his own way, Papa had become a practitioner of sholem bayess, seeking peace in the house, or at least around the kitchen table, by capitulating to Bernie’s limitations. I understood that he didn’t want to push him, or push him away, and risk losing another son. It was a sane response, but I saw it as a betrayal. It seemed that as my mother healed and my father softened, I was becoming more easily hurt and harder.